General Foods

History

Background

Main article: Post Consumer Brands

General Foods background can be traced to the Post Cereal Company, founded by C. W. Post in 1895 in Battle Creek, Michigan. Post was a patient at the Battle Creek Sanitarium (run by John Harvey Kellogg, brother of Kellogg Company founder Will Keith Kellogg). Post was inspired by the diet there to start his food company (and become a rival to the Kellogg brothers, who sold their own breakfast cereals). He invested $78 in his initial equipment and supplies and set up manufacturing in a barn on what was known as the 'Old Beardsley Farm'. His first product was Postum, a "cereal beverage" alternative to coffee made from wheat and molasses. The first cereal, Grape-Nuts, was developed in 1897, followed by Elijah's Manna in 1904, which was renamed Post Toasties in 1908.

In 1907 Collier's Weekly published an article questioning the claim made in advertisements for Grape Nuts that it could cure appendicitis. C. W. Post responded with advertisements questioning the mental capacity of the article's author, and Collier's Weekly sued for libel. The case was heard in 1910, and Post was fined $50,000. The decision was overturned on appeal, but advertisements for Postum products stopped making such claims.

General Foods

C.W. Post died in 1914, and his daughter Marjorie Merriweather Post took over the company. The Postum Cereals company acquired other companies such as Jell-O (gelatin dessert) in 1925, Walter Baker & Company (chocolate) and Hellmann's (sauces) in 1927, Maxwell House (coffee) in 1928, and other food brands.

By far the most important acquisition in 1929 was of the frozen-food company owned by Clarence Birdseye, called General Seafood Corporation. Birdseye (December 9, 1886 - October 7, 1956) was one of the most important entrepreneurs in the history of the food industry. Born in New York City, he became interested in the frozen preservation of food during the course of working as a fur trader in Labrador between 1912 and 1916. By 1923, he had developed a commercially viable process for quick-freezing foods using a belt mechanism, which he patented. In 1924, with backing from three investors, he formed the "General Seafoods Company" in Gloucester, Massachusetts to produce frozen haddock fillets packed in plain cardboard boxes.

The founder's daughter, Marjorie Merriweather Post, was the first to become excited about the prospects for the frozen foods business. In 1926, she had put into port at Gloucester on her yacht, Sea Cloud, and was served a luncheon meal which, she learned to her amazement, had been frozen six months before. Despite her enthusiasm, it took Post three years to convince Postum's management to acquire the company. Postum paid $10.75 million for a 51% interest and its partner, Goldman Sachs, paid $12.5 million for the other 49%. Following the sale, Birdseye remained in the frozen foods business. In 1932, he established "Birds Eye Frozen Foods", which by later in the decade was selling almost 100 different frozen products. It is not immediately clear how General Foods came to acquire the product name, but Birds Eye frozen vegetables were a major component of its business until the division was sold to Dean Foods in 1993. Following this acquisition, Postum, Inc changed its name to General Foods Corporation. Goldman sold its share back to General Foods in 1932, apparently at a slight loss.

Shortly after the acquisition, General Foods began test-marketing an expanded line of frozen foods, but the company quickly realized that a packaging process alone would not be sufficient to market frozen products in stores. To be sold, the packages had to be kept frozen while on display, so Birdseye engineers began development of a freezer cabinet designed specifically to hold frozen foods. The cabinet, which first appeared in 1934, required a great deal of space and electricity, which were not readily available in most grocery stores of the period. For those stores that could accommodate them, the payback was immediate. Housewives quickly realized that keeping packages of frozen food in the icebox could mean fresher meals and fewer trips to the market.

The company published a cookbook in 1932 called the General Foods Cook Book dedicated "To the American homemaker". Five editions were published between 1932 and 1937. The book includes photographs (among which is "General Foods offers over twenty famous products for your well-stocked pantry shelf") and a subject index.

General Foods acquired the Perkins Product Company, the makers of Kool-Aid, in 1953, Burger Chef in 1968, Oscar Mayer in 1981, Entenmann's in 1982, Oroweat in 1984, and the Freihofer baking company in 1987. The company then sold Burger Chef to Imasco, owner of Hardee's, in 1981.

General Foods was acquired by Philip Morris Companies (now Altria) in 1985 for $5.8 billion. In 1989, Phillip Morris merged General Foods with Kraft Foods Inc., which it had acquired in 1987, to form the Kraft General Foods division. The cereal brands of Nabisco were acquired in 1993. In 1995 Kraft General Foods was reorganized, and the Kraft Foods name was restored. On November 15, 2007, Kraft announced it would spin off Post Cereals and merge that business with Ralcorp Holdings. That merger was completed August 4, 2008, |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20081218155335/http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=102251&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1182967&highlight= |url-status = dead |archive-date = 2008-12-18 |access-date = 2008-09-08 at which time the official name of the company became Post Foods, LLC. In 2012, the original Kraft Foods Inc. was split into grocery and snack food companies with the grocery unit retaining the Kraft Foods name and the snack brands becoming Mondelez International. The company was then subsequently merged with Heinz Foods in 2015 to form Kraft Heinz.

References

References

1. (February 17, 1948). "Post Cereal Company". WKZO.
2. "Elijah's Manna Cereal". MrBreakfast.com.
3. Pendergrast, Mark. (2010). "Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World". Basic Books.
4. (1926-02-02). "POSTUM CEREAL BUYS IGLEHEART FLOUR CO.; Pays $11,500,000 in Stock and Will Retain Old Management -- Another Deal Pending". The New York Times.
5. (1927-05-27). "POSTUM SEEKING BAKER CO.; Cereal Firm Reported to Desire Control of Chocolate Concern". The New York Times.
6. (August 29, 1927). "Business: Postum Buys".
7. (1928-07-28). "Approves Cheek-Neal Sale to Postum". The New York Times.
8. Details of Birdseye's remarkable career may be found in ''American National Biography'', Vol. 2, pp. 808-9.
9. "Clarence Birdseye".
10. (1959-06-28). "1929 GAVE START TO FROZEN FOODS; Big Modern Industry Stems From Clarence Birdseye's Work in Labrador". The New York Times.
11. Hoover, Gary. (2020-10-23). "Forgotten Giant: General Foods".
12. The space and power requirements for the burgeoning frozen-food section was one factor which led to the rapid development of larger self-service [[supermarket]]s beginning in the late 1930s.
13. General Foods Consumer Service Department ''General Foods Cook Book''. New York: General Foods Corporation
14. (17 February 1953). "TO BUY PERKINS PRODUCTS; General Foods Plans to Acquire Company Making Kool-Aid". The New York Times.
15. . (October 16, 1967). ["General Foods Says It Plans To Buy Burger Chef Systems"](https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/djreprints/doc/133179393.html). *[[The Wall Street Journal]]*.
16. (5 February 1981). "GENERAL FOODS PLANS TO BUY OSCAR MAYER". The New York Times.
17. (7 October 1982). "GENERAL FOOD GETS ENTENMANN". The New York Times.
18. (9 April 1984). "Continental sells baking unit". UPI.
19. (19 August 1987). "The 74-year-old Charles Freihofer Baking Co. said Wednesday it...". UPI.
20. (10 December 1981). "Hardee's to Buy Burger Chef". The New York Times.
21. (1985-09-28). "PHILIP MORRIS TO BUY GENERAL FOODS FOR $5.8 BILLION". The New York Times.
22. Archives, L. A. Times. (1995-01-05). "Philip Morris to Consolidate 2 Food Divisions : Restructuring: Kraft and General Foods businesses will join under the Kraft Foods banner.".
23. Brewington, David. (January 29, 2025). "Kraft Heinz Exhibits a Concerning Trend of Divestitures and Contraction".
24. (January 4, 1993). "Kraft complete purchase of Nabisco's cold cereal businesses".
25. (1995-01-05). "Blending Kraft and General Foods". The New York Times.
26. "Kraft Foods to Merge Its Post Cereals Business With Ralcorp". Kraft Foods.
27. WATSON, Elaine. (2012-10-01). "Vernon leads charge at ‘New Kraft’ as old Kraft officially splits into two".
28. Rushe, Dominic. (2012-03-21). "Kraft spins off snacks business into new Mondelez International company". The Guardian.
29. Team, Trefis. (March 30, 2015). "Analysis Of the Kraft-Heinz Merger".